If You Want to Lose Weight, Eating Less Is Far More Important Than Exercising

Not a fan of the gym, but still want to lose a few pounds before summer rolls around? Well, you just might be in luck.

According to a professor of exercise science at the University of Texas, it's more important to focus on your diet rather than the amount of daily exercise you do if you want to lose weight. Now, before you get too excited, it's obviously still important to get yourself moving. But in terms of what will help you drop weight the fastest, it all has to do with what you're putting into your body.

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"Studies tend to show that in terms of weight loss, diet plays a much bigger role than exercise," Philip Stanforth told AOL.

This is because it takes a lot of time to burn off the foods we eat, especially if they're high in calories. Stanforth mentions that exercising burns far fewer calories than most people think (and takes a lot more time, as well). So, if we're ingesting fewer calories, our bodies are more apt to burn them off efficiently. To put it all in perspective, Stanforth explains:

"You'd have to walk 35 miles to burn 3,500 calories. That's a lot of walking. But if you look at eating, a Snickers bar might have, say, 500 calories. It's going to be a lot easier to cut the Snickers bar than to do five miles of walking every day."

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And in a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2014, researchers found that people who on high-protein diets and meal replacements had a better outcome than those who merely exercised without any modifications to their diet.

This isn't to say that exercise can't aid in weight loss, though. Some studies suggest that those who actually keep off the weight are the ones who regularly exercise andeat healthy. Building muscle in your body can actually help burn more calories throughout the day, too, which is certainly reason enough to curl some dumbbells.

But the big takeaway? The next time your belly is rumbling, grab a banana instead of that bag of chips.